In this third installment of the Icosahedrophilia Special Edition, adventure fans, you’ll hear part 3 of the adventure recorded on Worldwide D&D Game Day: Monster Manual 2 (May 23, 2009). Our particular group played at A Hidden Fortress in Simi Valley, California. This event featured the adventure Journey through the Silver Caves by Logan Bonner. Please listen to Special Edition 3 now or subscribe via iTunes. This episode features the following segments:

• The Staging Area: I briefly summarize parts 1 and 2, and then get us directly into the action.
• The Weather Report: The PCs end the fight against the rust monsters and friends with great mettle, but less metal. Then we make our way down a haunted river and again confront the kobold wyrmpriest.
• The Prop Shop: I offer another exclusive preview of a terrain power that appears in Dungeon Master’s Guide 2, here on the eve of that volume’s release!

The Staging Area

In part 1, our heroes pursued a kobold wyrmpriest into a cavern, trying to recover a stolen book of prophecy. The kobold got away with a harpy’s help. As we tried to pick up the kobold’s trail, we ran into two scarab beetles, an arbalester, and two rust monsters! (I confess that with my cloth “armor” and wooden wand, I felt invincible.)

The Weather Report

We defeat the rust monsters, scarab beetles, and arbalester, but not before one of the rust monsters eats our paladin’s armor! Following our “common knowledge” toward the titular Silver Caves, we pass through a haunted stretch of river, requiring a skill challenge to pass. Upon reaching the Silver Caves, we again confront the kobold wyrmpriest and more of her bodyguards.

The Prop Shop

In association with the Tome Show, Fist Full of Comics and Games, Critical Hits, Dungeon Mastering, Geek Dad, the Chatty DM, and At-Will, Icosahedrophilia is proud to bring you exclusive preview content and special coverage of Dungeon Master’s Guide 2!

The final boss fight took place on a larger version of the map below.

I think the elevations on the map are supposed to represent two stages going down, and then the stairs at the very “bottom” of the map (as oriented on the screen here) lead back up. However, our DM treated the section in the middle, where an orc stands alone, as a kind of chasm, with the cliff and stairs to where two orcs start together leading up instead of further down. Given the way the DM described the scene, it would have been handy to use the swinging rope or vine terrain power presented in Dungeon Master’s Guide 2 (if a vine or rope had been handy, of course):

As a DM, I could probably come up with something like this on the fly, but having a plug-and-play stat block can come in really handy for inexperienced DMs or DMs in a hurry. I’d rather use a stat block that’s been thought out and tested than just ruling an effect by the seat of my pants.

The fight against the kobold concludes (sort of) in the final installment, “Journey through the Silver Caves, Part 4″—coming soon!